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Teaching Foreign Languages K–12: A Library of Classroom Practices 1

Daily Routines Video Summary In this lesson, students practice vocabulary related to daily routines in Japan and in the U.S. First, Ms. Dyer uses Total Physical Response and authentic materials to introduce the vocabulary. Next, the class places pictures of daily activities in sequential order, and continues reviewing the vocabulary and reflecting on Japanese culture depicted in large photo panels. Then, in pairs, students use props and drawings to talk about their personal routines. Finally, students compare the daily routines of students living in Japan and in the U.S., using a Venn diagram and a game of charades. Standards Addressed

• Communication: Interpersonal

• Cultures: Practices, Products

• Comparisons: Cultural

Read about these standards at the end of this lesson.

Classroom at a Glance Teacher: Margaret Dyer

Language: Japanese

Grade: 5

School: Clarendon Elementary School, San Francisco, California

Lesson Date: May 16

Class Size: 26

Schedule: 45 minutes daily


Key Terms • authentic materials

• Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES)

• heritage speaker

• information gap

• native speaker

• negotiation of meaning

• realia

• Total Physical Response (TPR)

• Venn diagram

Definitions for these terms can be found in the Glossary located in the Appendix.


Class Context

“It’s all about setting the stage and comprehensible input—hearing that wait time before I expect them to start producing the language. Having the authentic materials makes the whole setting of what I’m doing more realistic. So the kids can really feel like, ‘Hey, she’s in Japan right now. She’s wearing a Japanese robe that’s really from Japan.’” —Margaret Dyer

School Profile Margaret Dyer is the Japanese Curriculum Coordinator and teaches grades K–5 Japanese at Clarendon Elementary School in San Francisco, California. The school’s 532 students come from a diverse community that includes many Japanese American families. Students participate in either the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program (JBBP), which offers Japanese language and culture education, or the Second Community Program, which offers Italian language and culture education. Both programs rely on strong parent involvement. The JBBP is part of the sequential Japanese K–12 program in the San Francisco Unified School District (see Resources). The program, which began in 1973, grew out of the desire of Japanese American parents to keep their heritage language and culture alive for their children. Clarendon Elementary’s Japanese Foreign Language in the Elementary Schools Program integrates Japanese with the core curriculum of the school district. In this program, content is woven into standards-based Japanese lessons and Japanese is woven into the instruction of other subjects for all students. To

Year at a Glance Self • Personal information (e.g., name, age,

pets) • Preferences (e.g., hobbies, sports,

foods) • Future plans; Body and health

Family • Family members’ personal information

Home • Daily routines • Rooms in the house; Location of

objects Food • Fruits/vegetables; Japanese foods and

dishes • Shopping and cooking; Money;

Restaurants and ordering School • Directions; School rooms and subjects • Daily routines • Objects; Calendar; Weather

Nature • Weather; Community; Holidays • Pen pal letters


Class Context, cont’d. extend their Japanese cultural and language learning, native and heritage Japanese students also meet once a week in a heritage language class taught by a native Japanese speaker. Lesson Design Ms. Dyer refers to the Standards and the Scope and Sequence for the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program when designing her lessons (see Resources). She begins by looking at each unit as a whole and determining what she wants students to accomplish by the end of the unit. She then considers the content that students studied in previous years and integrates those elements to deepen students’ understanding. Ms. Dyer also selects the vocabulary words students need to review and the new terms she wants to introduce. When organizing individual lessons, Ms. Dyer follows the California Department of Education’s five-step process (see “Promoting Attractions of Japan”). The Lesson In the videotaped lesson, students began the School unit with new vocabulary related to daily routines. They used the new vocabulary in guided practice and then transitioned to application and extension activities. In a follow-up lesson, the students described their own schedules and incorporated vocabulary they learned from the Family, Home, and Food units. Approximately one-third of the students in this class were native or heritage Japanese speakers. In this lesson, Ms. Dyer challenged the native and heritage students to be more precise in the times they list for their daily routines. In other lessons, she has given native and heritage students opportunities to challenge themselves through additional reading and writing assignments. Key Teaching Strategies

• Formative Assessment: The teacher uses specific activities to evaluate how well students are learning material and to make necessary changes to instruction throughout the lesson.


Class Context, cont’d.

• Providing Comprehensible Input: The teacher introduces language that is slightly beyond students’ current ability to understand and uses visuals, gestures, rephrasing, and/or props to establish meaning. The goal is for students to comprehend language through context.

Analyze the Video As you reflect on these questions, write down your responses or discuss them as a group. Before You Watch Respond to the following questions:

• How do you adapt instruction when your class includes heritage learners (who can range from bilingual students to students with minimal skills in the target language)?

• How do visuals and props enhance student learning?

• How do you incorporate cultural comparisons into a topic like daily

routines?

• How do you let students know what the planned activities and goals are for a lesson?

Watch the Video As you watch “Daily Routines,” take notes on Ms. Dyer’s instructional strategies, particularly how she scaffolds activities to achieve specific outcomes. Write down what you find interesting, surprising, or especially important about the teaching and learning in this lesson.


Analyze the Video, cont’d. Reflect on the Video Review your notes, and then respond to the following questions:

• What steps do students follow from the beginning to the end of the lesson? What new learning is achieved at each step?

• How is culture integrated into the different activities? When is

understanding culture the intended outcome, and when is it an underlying element?

• What accommodations does Ms. Dyer make for heritage/native

speakers?

• Which activities involve learning set phrases? Which activities contain tasks with an information gap?

Look Closer Take a second look at Ms. Dyer’s class to focus on specific teaching strategies. Use the video images below to locate where to begin viewing.

Video Segment: Setting the Stage Using TPR

You’ll find this segment approximately 5 minutes after the video starts. Watch for about 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Ms. Dyer uses TPR and authentic materials to teach vocabulary related to daily routines.

• How does Ms. Dyer organize classroom materials to prepare for comprehensible input?

• During the first TPR step, what is Ms. Dyer’s role? What is the

students’ role?

• When do students begin actively participating in the activity? What is


the benefit of waiting for active participation?

Video Segment: Sharing Information

You’ll find this segment approximately 13 minutes after the video starts. Watch for about 4 minutes.

In front of the class, student pairs identify daily activities shown in posters. They then work with their partners to practice vocabulary for the times associated with the tasks that make up their daily routines.

• What is the students’ task at the poster stations? How do the clocks facilitate the task?

• How does the A/B rotation work? What is the benefit of this technique? • What evidence do you see of interpersonal communication? What

evidence do you see of students negotiating meaning with one another?


Analyze the Video, cont’d.

Video Segment: Comparing Cultures

You’ll find this segment approximately 21 minutes after the video starts. Watch for about 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Students use charades to demonstrate daily activities of people living in Japan and in the U.S., while their classmates guess each activity and place a drawing of it on a Venn diagram.

• How do students acquire background knowledge for the cultural activity?

• How does Ms. Dyer help students make cultural comparisons that

require language skills they don’t have yet?

• What aspects of culture lend themselves to an experiential or physical approach?

Connect to Your Teaching Reflect on Your Practice As you reflect on these questions, write down your responses or discuss them as a group.

• Describe a recent lesson you taught that demonstrated a clear learning sequence. How might you determine if a step is missing in the sequence?

• How might you use TPR, role-playing, and gestures with students at

your grade level?


Connect to Your Teaching, cont’d.

• When teaching thematically, how do you integrate cultural topics?

• What kinds of formal and informal assessments do you use to check student progress?

Watch Other Videos Watch other videos in the Teaching Foreign Languages K–12 library for more examples of teaching methodologies like those you’ve just seen. Note: All videos in this series are subtitled in English.

• “How We Spend Our Free Time” (Arabic) illustrates a teacher's approach to help students activate vocabulary they have been learning and make cultural comparisons.

• “U.S. and Italian Homes” (Italian) shows students using information

about their own homes to connect to class discussions. • “Routes to Culture” (Spanish) demonstrates a rotation technique used

for multiple interpersonal exchanges. Put It Into Practice Try these ideas in your classroom.

• Use sequential scaffolding to design a lesson. Begin by describing the

outcome you want students to achieve, then outline a series of steps that takes them to that point. Select the key vocabulary, grammatical structures, and cultural aspects that you want to address. Keep in mind any new learning you want students to master at each step. Ms. Dyer began by identifying her end goal—having students state in sequential order the activities that make up their daily routines—then designed the prerequisite steps for students to reach this goal in one class session. ( This end goal was also planned to tie in with her intended outcome for the overall unit.)


Connect to Your Teaching, cont’d.

• Use visuals to support learning. Visual prompts help students associate language with meaning and keep them focused on productive tasks. Keep in mind that lesson-based visuals are learning tools. Classroom decoration, by contrast, serves a different purpose: to evoke the ambiance of the target culture. Ms. Dyer provided visual support for every activity: realia for her TPR introduction, photo panels for cultural insight, cards and worksheets with drawings for practice exercises, student-created filmstrips to organize students’ own information, and drawings of cultural practices for the Venn diagram. Some of the materials were commercially produced, but Ms. Dyer and her students made the majority. Collect realia that can be used for comprehensible input, and find ways to use drawings to assess student comprehension.


Resources Curriculum References California Department of Education Foreign Language Curriculum Frameworks http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/downloads.html Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program http://parents.clarendonjbbp.org/ Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program: Scope and Sequence* * This document can be found in the Appendix. Margaret Dyer’s Recommendations Web Resources: Be-Go Land International http://www.be-go.net/index.html A cross-cultural Web site by children from around the world talking about their day-to-day lives Journey to Japan: A Day in the Life of a Japanese Child http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/teched/japan.htm A project plan for writing a story about Japanese life, including worksheets and reference links Library of Congress Federal Research Division: Country Studies http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/ Comprehensive information on the history, culture, politics, economy, and geography of over 100 countries, including Japan


Resources, cont’d. Print Resources:

Hirate, Susan H., and Noriko Kawaura. Nihongo Daisuki: Japanese for Children Through Games and Songs. Honolulu, HI: Bess Press, 1990. Texts by Japanese publishers

• Hiki series of storybooks (Publisher: Doshin sha)

• Kumon no hajimete no uta no e hon (Publisher: Kumon Shuppan)


Standards World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages The World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages create a roadmap to guide learners to develop competence to communicate effectively and interact with cultural understanding. This lesson correlates to the following Standards: Communication Communicate effectively in more than one language in order to function in a variety of situations and for multiple purposes Standard: Interpersonal Communication Learners interact and negotiate meaning in spoken, signed, or written conversations to share information, reactions, feelings, and opinions. Cultures Interact with cultural competence and understanding Standard: Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the cultures studied. Standard: Relating Cultural Products to Perspectives Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the products and perspectives of the cultures studied. Comparisons Develop insight into the nature of language and culture in order to interact with cultural competence Standard: Cultural Comparisons Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.


Notes

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